Book · 2018
The Dependence of Sociocultural Anthropology on Theological Anthropology
Oxford Scholarship Online
Abstract
This chapter argues that classic Christian theological anthropology has emphasized that all human beings are part of the one human family descending from Adam and Eve, created in the image of God, yet fallen and sinful. These beliefs have been traditionally expounded with reference to Genesis 1–3. Sociocultural anthropologists, in contrast, have often prided themselves on shedding Christian beliefs. The Genesis narrative, in particular, has been the object of attacks. Nevertheless, when some nineteenth-century freethinking anthropologists argued that belief in the monogenesis of the human race was just the result of the influence of an erroneous Judeo-Christian myth, the discipline weeded such thinking out of its midst. Thus, even as it sidelined Christianity, orthodox anthropology from the founding of the discipline to the present has affirmed the doctrine of the psychic unity of humankind. This essay argues that this foundational conviction of anthropology is informed by Christian thought.